From Five to Thirty-five(and counting). . .

(((This one has been sitting on my draft section for awhile now, it is just now making it into the light)))

"In 2003, there were seven officers to patrol Bluffton's town limits. In five years, that number's multiplied by five." -Bluffton Today

This was an excerpt from my town's newspaper, the Bluffton Today, the article talked about how our police department is continuing to grow as this one-horse of a town continues to grow and move forward. Yes, growth is very important because the bigger a town gets the more people want to feel protected by a "protective establishment." However, the number of personnel that a department has does not excuse the quality of personnel at a said "protective establishment". As from what I have seen on numerous occasions, the Bluffton Police Department is probably if not the most laziest, dead-brained, idiotic police department I have ever had the un-pleasure of being in their precinct. Some people can say, "how am I able to judge these public figures?" Well the answer is fairly simple my friend, my father is a marine and my mother has a law degree(where she worked along-side with just about every police department no matter where the military has sent us.) So I know what is like to be part of a well-established police department, and I know what it is like to watch a police department go from nothing to something over the span of two, three, four, five years. Also I do know what it is like to respect a respectable "protective establishment" however, when said respectable "protective establishments" are not doing their jobs this is where it begins to irk to me no extent. I have came here around the time of 2003 and so far I have no seen anything that makes our "protective establishment" roughly noticeable or even worthy. Since my time here I am seen officers asleep on the job, during a traffic jam out of 278 I have caught at least three officers asleep in their patrol cars as drivers speed past them as if they were not there. I also have caught two officers (one on buckwalter and one actually yesterday near the Bluffton baseball stadium on Bluffton parkway.) Ordering pizza while they are supposedly on patrol, to make matters worse they are ordering pizza while on my tax dollars and having that said pizza delivered to their cop car. I have also seen one officer, drive pass an elderly lady whose car had just broke down. This officer did not provide assistance, she was eventually help by my buddy and I as we doubled back to her on 278. I have seen several officers turn on their lights so they can park in the emergency no parking zones just to do some daily activities. Their is this one person( I know everyone has to at least seen this officer once or twice.) Driving around in a Bluffton Police Department vehicle, wearing civilian clothes doing civilians things such as driving their children to and from school, going to football games (to watch not protect) or to drive to the grocery store. I have witness officers avoiding helping people such as that sub-division across from Chic-fil-a, a driver had drove out during a red light, screwed and missed two cars and ended up marooning her car on the grassy edge that leads into that particular sub-division. My mother and I had witness this, so we went over to provide assistance to make sure the driver was not having a seizure while they were driving (according to my mother this happens more often then I think.) After getting out of the car, the driver started to apologize to us "I am so sorry so so sorry." it became apparent to us she was drunk. Luckily for us behind the sign, their was a Bluffton Officer, I asked to officer to help this lady. All he said was I am off the clock, and called for some help in that particular area. Terrible, terrible ethics. Sure of course having numbers is nice but when you are not doing your job what is the point of having such large numbers.